An Entire Article About Street Peddler

From a competitive perspective I’ve been impressed with the SanSan cycle thus far. Every pack has given us at least a few cards that have been making their way into tournament viable decks, and it’s hard to argue that it hasn’t had a substantial impact on the metagame. The Underway looks to be no exception to this rule, with Marcus Batty particularly drawing a ton of attention. But we’re not here to talk about dusty old sysops with psychic powers today.

Today we’re hitting the streets.

Anarch – Where we’ve been, where we are

Before we break down everyone’s new street heart, let’s have a look at the faction it’s been printed in. Arguably Anarch is the faction that’s undergone the most upheaval throughout the history of the game (probably tied with Shaper). After Jackson Howard was printed and Noise suffered, Anarch’s tournament viability was all but non-existent. Beyond some metagame calls with Whizzard and persistent Noise players, Shaper and Criminal became the factions that you played if you wanted to take home playmats.

The Lunar Cycle marked the beginning of the return of the Anarch, with Cache and Inject throwing a bone to all the hungry Anarch players of the world. But as it turned out, The Lunar Cycle was just the starter before the delicious Order and Chaos main course. MaxX, I’ve Had Worse, Eater and Hivemind all enabled new and powerful Anarch builds. The faction was back with a vengeance. Up until this point the SanSan cycle has continued to give support to everyone’s favourite angry runners, with out of faction cards Career Fair and Net Ready Eyes finding their homes into more tournament winning Anarch decks. Crazy as it is, we seem to be living in a world where Anarch is a solid tournament choice, and Criminal is the one being desperately clung onto by die-hard fans of the faction. How far we’ve come.

From a mechanical perspective, what makes the faction what it is? Understanding this will be key to assessing the place of new cards like Peddles McGhee. Beyond everything else, Anarchs are the best at attacking the Corp’s resources. Parasite, Imp and Vamp are just a few of the cards that smash down whatever the Corp has built up. If Shaper is about letting the Corp have whatever they want and navigating its way through it, Anarch disrupts the Corp directly. Why find your way through the maze when you can burn it down? Additionally Anarch has always been the faction that engineers the most frightening and powerful board states. Whether it’s a Medium with ten counters on it or a Lamprey headlock, Anarch seems to be the factionwith inevitability, power turns, and cards that demand immediate answers. While Noise takes this to the extreme with his mills, you could argue that even something like Reg Ass MaxX has a better long game than most of the decks out of other factions. Against Criminal and Shaper the Corp knows that it can build a bigger and better board state the longer the game goes. By contrast, nothing is safe from the Anarch arsenal.

Power and inevitably come with a cost. The issue that Anarch has had to combat since day one is that when compared to their blue and green counterparts, they’re inefficient and slow. Up until the Lunar Cycle, Anarch card draw meant Wyldside and Anarch tutor meant Djinn. The Criminal and Shaper factions were able to offer tournament players that all important consistency that would stop them from losing games because of bad draws. While this Anarch issue has been smoothed out with the release of I’ve Had Worse, Inject and Earthrise Hotel, they’re still not out of the woods. Anarch is still the faction most susceptible to giving up agendas because they didn’t have the right breaker at the right time (also known as ‘gear checking’). With no tutors like Self-modifying Code or generous hand refillers like Quality Time, Anarch decks are most likely to lose the game because they weren’t fast or efficient enough to keep up with the Corp because often they just don’t have the time. The powerful cards are already here, it’s just finding and playing them expediently that’s the issue. If we’re looking at room for improvement, it’s this.

Enter Street Peddler

The Card Itself – Who Is She?

Before we look at the ins and outs of the various effects of the card, let’s be clear on what it is and what it does. For a start it’s a 0 cost resource. The cost of a card often makes or breaks it, and Street Peddler soars over this first hurdle. When it comes to cards that generate resources, it goes without saying that cheaper is better. Diesel is so good because you can just play it as soon as you draw it without having to worry about it taking you out of range of playing your other cards. Being out of range to even play your economy cards in the first place is even worse. Peddles McGhee is never going to ask us for money upfront. Because Street Peddler is also not unique, there’s very little discouraging us from just firing it off as soon as we draw it and having it sit on the table.

Being a resource isn’t really any kind of advantage for a card that we don’t want to use with Career Fair, and it is a small liability if we want to play Vamp and Account Siphon in our deck. However it’s increasingly common for Anarch decks to be resource based anyway, so the type isn’t a downside. It isn’t going to spend a ton of time hanging around, so we don’t really have to worry about it getting trashed when we’re tagged. It’s also Seedy, so it will be all ready to go when the Seedy tutor is printed.

Let’s look at the text box. Once Street Peddler is installed the only way to get at any of the cards underneath it is to use its trash ability and install one of them. Since Street Peddler only installs cards, any events that go underneath can’t be played, and are lost to us. Other than that however, Street Peddler can currently install every other card type in the game.

The cards hosted on Street Peddler are facedown, with only the Runner being allowed to look at them. This means that Street Peddler hides information that the runner has from the Corp, previously a privilege only enjoyed by the Runner’s Grip and the contents of their Stack.

If Street Peddler is trashed, whether through the activation of its ability or whether through something like Aesop’s Pawnshop, the rest of the cards will go to our heap. This means that Street Peddler plays pretty well with any kind of heap recursion; if we have a Clone Chip installed and Peddler hits two of the breakers we want to install, we just found two breakers for one click. It also means that we can get back any crucial events that we hit with Deja Vu or Same Old Thing.

Also bear in mind that Street Peddler’s ability doesn’t require a click. We can install something in the middle of a run or during the Corp’s turn. It should go without saying that this is an important part of the card. Part of the power of Clone Chip and Self-modifying Code is that they operate similarly.

With the ins and outs of the card noted, let’s examine Street Peddler. Why exactly do I feel the need to write an article about it?

Burrowing Through the Stack – The See Three

Let’s start by assessing the most important part about Street Peddler. When we install it we’re giving ourselves the option to install one of the top three cards of our deck. Provided that we don’t hit three events with Street Peddler, installing it is a strict upgrade to drawing a card. Even if we just hit one card that we’re interested in installing, we get to see that card where we hadn’t previously, and install it, while only spending the one click installing Street Peddler. We don’t even had to acknowledge the 1 credit discount or the instant speed install to see how powerful that is. We’re not losing any credits for this privilege either, so unless we think we might get decked this game installing Street Peddler as soon as we draw it comes with no downside. In fact, even if we had to pay a Click to install one of the cards under Street Peddler it would still be better than drawing a card. Instead of giving us access to one card that we can choose to install, it has simply given us access to three. We’ll cover the discount, the instant install, the possibility of decking and the saved Click later in the article.

Street Peddler also trashes the two cards that we don’t install when we use its second ability. For the most part Anarch would rather have a card in its heap than its stack, because Anarch decks tend to pack a lot of recursion. If we’re playing Street Peddler in Noise and we hit two copies of Cache, we can install one of them immediately, sell it to Aesop next turn, and then Deja Vu two copies into our hand. If we have a Same Old Thing in play, Street Peddler also helps us to find that crucial Legwork or Blackmail. In fact, Street Peddler could even hit a Same Old Thing and an Event (though this is more of a possible fringe benefit than a huge point in its favour).

The fact that installing it has essentially no downside is huge. When assessing the tournament viability of a card, it’s all too easy to focus on the best case scenarios, without looking at the worst case. Too many runners have excitedly sleeved up Comets and Quest Completed because they envision some absurd sequence of events where they draw their cards in the perfect order and completely destroy the Corp. Of course you should consider a card’s best case scenario when you play it, but it’s important to focus on when the card is going to be at its worst. The reason that cards like Diesel and Dirty Laundry appear in so many tournament-winning decklists is that they’ll almost always be worth playing; these are the kinds of cards that grind you through Swiss rounds. If we want to know if a card is worth the include we need to look at how good it’s going to be in bad situations.

Street Peddler asks so little of us. As long as we have a Click to spare, it’s going to give us an advantage. Crucially we’re losing practically nothing when we’re playing it versus drawing a card, so unless you never plan to use a Click to draw for the rest of the game (something that’s fairly unlikely in the majority of Anarch builds) it’s going to pull its weight. If we’re looking at cards that are strict upgrades to drawing there’s only one other that takes this title; the aforementioned Diesel. Street Peddler is in good company in this regard. Even if we never install one of the cards under Street Peddler, it’s dug us three cards through our stack to help us find what we need. If we’re looking for one specific card Street Peddler has helped us, even if it doesn’t find it.

Bear in mind that all these statements only apply to the ‘see three and install one of them’ aspect of Street Peddler. This is before we examine the numerous other advantages.

So Much to Do – The Click

If we install one of the cards underneath it, Street Peddler has saved us a Click. We go from having the card in our stack where we can’t access it, to in play, for one Click. The only other card in the game with this capability is Self-modifying Code. A lot of the time cards don’t allow us to save a click like this; Hostage and Planned Assault both charge us an extra click for the privilege of playing the cards they find. If we use Street Peddler to find an install a Medium, we’re given an extra Click to run R&D with.

This will always be a big deal, but it’s particularly important when the two best Corp decks at the time of writing (Replicating Perfection and Near Earth Hub) pressure the runner’s Clicks so effectively. In a world of rich Runners, the only resource that can realistically be taxed out is Clicks. Spending 0 Credits to effectively save ourselves a Click absolutely should not be underestimated. An extra Click at the right time is the kind of thing that can win us games, particularly in the Anarch faction, which is most likely to lose to a Corp that rushes out Agendas with gear checks.

Got Some Rare Things on Sale Stranger – The Discount

Street Peddler has a further benefit beyond allowing us access to a card and allowing us to install it for a single click. For some reason we also get a discount of one credit. I guess that we don’t get a warranty or something. Recognising the benefit of this doesn’t require as much of an explanation as the previously mentioned benefits, but it is worth acknowledging. If we do install the card under Street Peddler and it costs more than 0, installing it has been better than clicking for a Credit. We’re up one Credit, while also reaping the previously mentioned benefits. Anarch is not the faction of reducing costs, so this is new ground. We’re seeing more cards, we’re saving time on getting one of them into play, and we’re still saving ourselves some money. This card operates on every economic level – we’re seeing more cards, saving time, and making money.

Right Here, Right Now – The Instant Install

We can install one of the cards under Street Peddler at any time. This has several benefits, some of which I’ll mention here and some of which warrant their own sections later. For now let’s talk about the fact that Street Peddler can install cards during runs, during the Corp’s turn or when you can afford them. All of these are very real benefits that you’re going to appreciate during games.

Let’s say you hit an Icebreaker that you’ll probably want with Street Peddler. Paying upfront costs for Icebreakers when you’re not running is always a little annoying, since you’re losing Credits right now for some potential benefit later. This is particularly annoying with expensive Icebreakers like Yog.0 or Crypsis. Street Peddler allows us to have our Yog.0 at the ready, without having to pay 5 Credits before we use it. We can happily make runs and wait for the Corp to rez their Quandry or Wraparound, at which point we happily pull off our breaker (at a discount) and avoid losing a Click to an End the Run gear check. With a D4v1d or a Mimic under Peddler we can avoid a nasty face check without having to commit resources up front. Let’s say we hit an Imp or a Medium; we can wait to see if we’re going to make it through the Corp’s Ice before spending our hard earned Credits on the program that we want to use. It’s an annoying loss of resources to pay for a Medium that sits uselessly when it turns out that we can’t get into R&D.

Stimhack is worth mentioning separately. Stimhack and Street Peddler are both powerful, 1 Influence cards that are in the same faction, so they will often make it into the same decklist on their individual merits. Street Peddler lets us spend the credits on installing whatever is under Street Peddler, making additional use of Stimhack Credits. MaxX and Kate often Stimhack a naked SanSan City Grid and use the rest of the money to Self-modifying Code or Clone Chip out something, and Street Peddler lets anyone make a similar play. Stimhacking out a Liberated Accounts is a huge economic boost. Stimhack + Street Peddler is an example of the best kind of combo; two cards that are great on their own combining to do something even more powerful.

Installing cards during the Corp’s turn is going to be the kind of benefit that comes up occasionally, but is important when it does. The most obvious candidates for this are Clot and Plascrete Carapace. We can just run out Street Peddler at no cost, and wait to see what the Corp is up to. If they go for that SEA Source, we’ll pull off our Plascrete and live to run another day. If they don’t have it we’ll save our credits. We don’t have to waste precious resources anticipating a situation that may not have occurred anyway. We also have the potential to surprise the Corp, something we’ll cover later.

Another benefit of putting off the install until later is the Credit factor. Liberated Accounts is seeing a lot of play at the moment because it’s a solid economy card. However the card’s high entry fee can sometimes prohibitive. If we find it with Street Peddler, we can just leave it there until we’re ready to use it. We can go up to our maximum handsize and also have another card that we might want to install, so in that sense it’s like we have another card in our hand.

Street Peddler has enough benefits that it would still be good if it made us install one of the cards right now, but it gives us even more options by allowing us leave the cards under it until we want them.

I’ll Wait – Keeping Your Options Open

So far all the points in Street Peddler’s favour have applied even if we want only one of the cards that’s been hosted on it, but things get even better if we hit more than one card that we want. Because we can install the cards when we need them, we can leave several useful cards under Street Peddler and pull the one off that we need when we need it. Let’s say we hit two Icebreakers and want to get into a Remote Server to trash an Adonis Campaign. We can run it, see what Ice they rez and pull off the right one (during the run, at a discount). If we hit Mimic and Medium we can run R&D, pulling off Medium if we get in or Mimic if Architect is rezzed. If neither of these things happen we can save our money, put off making the decision and do the same thing again in a few turns.

This benefit is also great in conjunction with some of the benefits mentioned above. If we hit a Plascrete and an economy card we can wait to see if the Corp tries to SEA Scorch us, and if they don’t we can instead grab the Daily Casts or Kati Jones that Street Peddler hit instead. Getting to make important decisions with more information available is a big deal, and it’s not the kind of benefit that we’d usually see from an economy card. One of the reasons that Self-modifying Code is so powerful is that you can wait until the last minute to get the card that you need with it. You force the Corp to commit its money before you need to commit yours. This benefit is further pronounced when we factor in the fact that Street Peddler hides information.

If It Weren’t For You Peddlin’ Kids – The Hidden Information

If Street Peddler hosted the cards that it hit face up, all the benefits previously mentioned would still apply. Except it doesn’t, and I have to write about even more good things that this card does. Street Peddler stands alongside the Runner’s Grip and Stack as the only information in the game that the Runner knows that the Corp doesn’t. This is huge when combined with the instant speed install, because it can lead to the Corp taking actions that turn out badly for them. As soon as Street Peddler hits the table the Corp suddenly has to respect that Plascrete Carapace could come out of nowhere and make their expensive SEA Source look ridiculous. They could spend 3 credits to rez an Enigma that they expect to fire and suddenly find that the runner is busting through it without breaking a sweat. These are supposed to be the kinds of things that Shapers are known for, yet here we have a card with a lot of other reliable economic benefits that can surprise the Corp, out of Anarch. There’s potential to blow out the Corp and massively swing the game in the Runner’s favour. Other economic stalwarts like Inject and Diesel will very rarely do that. The potential to lead to extreme blowouts whilst also having very little downside is a potent combination.

It also helps us because if Street Peddler totally misses there’s no way for the Corp to find out, and they must continue to respect it even if it does nothing for us. If Street Peddler hits our Blackmails, our opponent doesn’t know and must continue to play around the fact that we might have drawn them.

I’ve mentioned this last because I don’t think that it’s as important as the other upsides. I’ve seen some people focus on the surprise factor of Street Peddler and I think that that’s a mistake. In high level play hidden information simply doesn’t play as much of a factor as you might think. Street Peddler would still be a very good card if the cards on it were hosted face up. I would be lax to not acknowledge this upside however.

The Downsides

Clearly Street Peddler isn’t all insane value all the time. While I think that part of the card’s strength is its relative lack of downside, there are some points against it that I should mention.

Out of Stock – If We Miss

Sometimes Street Peddler won’t have anything that we want. It could hit all Events and unique cards that we’ve already installed, or it could just hit cards that aren’t going to be installed this game. Hitting Events is an obvious drawback, and hitting everything else mentioned is much less of one, so we’ll tackle them separately.

It’s definitely true that Street Peddler gets worse and worse the more Events you pack in your deck. Exactly how many events is too many to discourage us form maxing out on Street Peddler in an Anarch deck is not within the scope of this article, but I’d posit that once over a third of our deck is Events it might be cause for concern. Within the Anarch faction this is extremely rare, part of the reason that Street Peddler is so good in faction is that Anarch runs Event light anyway. It’s fairly common for an Anarch deck to run less than 10 events. Street Peddler is also good enough that I’d happily shave my Event numbers to make it better. Bear in mind that playing Street Peddler isn’t making it any less likely that we’re going to see our Events over the course of a game unless we end the game with 0, 1 or 2 cards in our Stack.

If you have Same Old Thing installed or in your Stack, always bear in mind that Street Peddler might actually improve your chances of finding and playing the Event that you need this turn. This also applies to Clone Chip and Inject.

If we’ve decided in deckbuilding that we want multiples of a Unique card or more situational cards, we’re committing to the possibility of drawing them anyway, and Street Peddler hitting 3 cards that you’ll never install is the same as playing a Diesel and hitting three duds. Street Peddler isn’t anti synergy with a deck full of those cards because we’d have to see them at some point regardless, so unless there are much better alternatives Peddler should still be welcome. A lot of the time Street Peddler should ensure that we dig past multiple unique cards faster in order to keep hitting gas again.

End of the Line – If We Deck

Obviously digging us through our deck very quickly starts to look like a downside in the games where we draw every card in our deck, because in that situation cards like Street Peddler have stopped us from eking out every last bit of value from our cards. While this is something to bear in mind, I constantly see people worrying about this situation way, way too much. Outside of MaxX I tend to find that if I have time to dig through my entire deck I’m probably winning anyway. This is particularly true in Anarch, a faction full of powerful, high impact cards and on board long term econ.

If you’re Whizzard or Noise, seeing your whole stack is going to be very good for you, and you should not be worrying about making that situation even better during deck construction, since you ought to be winning that game regardless. Anarch is the faction that loses on speed and Click compression, so making ourselves much stronger in this area while undermining our best case scenario ever so slightly shouldn’t be something that we worry about. Besides, it isn’t even guaranteed that Street Peddler will make things worse for us if we do deck; if you hit a breaker that you already have and a unique Resource that you’ve already installed, the decking factor isn’t even a worry because they were dead cards anyway.

It is true that sometimes you’ll be close enough to the bottom of your Stack that playing Street Peddler is incorrect, but this isn’t a strong strike against the card. Inject sometimes does this too and it’s not a problem, because it’s bad in a situation that’s already good for you. You’re always going to have an early game, and a lot of the time (particularly against good players) there won’t be a long late game. Stop worrying about what happens when you draw your whole stack.

The obvious exception to this point is MaxX. Right now I’m pretty sure that MaxX isn’t interested in Street Peddler, and she’s the only Anarch I plan to not play Street Peddler in for the foreseeable future. MaxX does need to worry about getting as much value as possible out of every card, because she can run out of cards without having practically won the game already.

The Street Belongs to Everyone – On Splashing

So far my examples have mostly focused on the Anarch faction, because as well as not costing Influence I think that Anarchs generally benefit the most from this effect the most, since they’re still the faction that lacks tutoring. However in keeping with its low cost theme, Street Peddler only charges Shapers and Criminals 1 Influence per inclusion. Because of its power I think that Street Peddler improves a lot of decks, making it a question of Influence a lot of the time.

Even 1 Influence is a big ask when the card pool is as big as it is though. Datasucker and Quality Time are fantastic splashable cards too, but they aren’t seeing as much play outside of their respective factions anymore. Generally Runners tend to be more interested in spending their Influence on splashy out of faction effects instead of efficiency, so I’d be hesitant to throw Street Peddler into every Criminal and Shaper deck that plays light on events. However, as we’ll see in the Decklist section below, there are some instances in which Street Peddler has small synergies out of faction that make it worth the include. You shouldn’t write it off as a card that you only play if you’re an Anarch. Runners not included in the Decklists that synergise with Street Peddler include Nasir (for installing during runs) and Hayley (who loves cards that don’t cost credits).

Word on the Street – Decklists

Honestly I’d play 3x Street Peddler in every non MaxX non event heavy Anarch list. Just as Diesel has essentially become an auto include in Shaper, Street Peddler is probably better than most of the cards in your deck. However I understand that this is a bit wishy washy, so here are some decklists that include the Peddler that I think will particularly benefit.

I play a lot of Noise, and recently I’ve been going cold on the Wyldside + Adjusted Chronotype combo. Making your good draws great as the expense of making your awkward draws worse is just exacerbating the problems that Noise has anyway, and I was sick of digging for action and hitting Adjusted Chronotype. Right now my instinct is to play the full 3 of I’ve Had Worse, Inject and Street Peddler and just be as lean and quick as possible. Your Parasites, Imps and Deja Vus, combined with your ID ability, make your late game extremely powerful anyway. Street Peddler is fantastic in Noise because it’s another card that digs us to Aesop quickly, and speed is Noise’s biggest problem. I added the miser’s Earthrise Hotel because I wanted a little more draw, but it may well be a terrible include. It might be better to play Symmetrical Visage or even another breaker or something. Faust is also an unknown quantity at this point, but it’s certainly worth testing.

Even if you still want to play Wyldside in Noise I’d still give Street Peddler the nod, possibly losing I’ve Had Worse or Inject, depending on how much damage concerns you. Street Peddler is probably even better in Wyldside + Chronotype decks, because it can help you to find both cards, and Peddler can store the Chronotype until Wyldside turns up.

Valencia is also a natural home for Street Peddler for a couple of reasons. First of all her 50 card minimum decksize is somewhat mitigated by the low cost efficiency and digging that Street Peddler provides. We’re less likely to lose because we can’t find a key breaker in time. Street Peddler also makes use of the Valencia Bad Publicity if we don’t need to spend any credits during a run, say when we go to check Archives after a Jackson overdraw. This small synergy pushes the power of Street Peddler a little further. This list is based on the list that Stimhacker Hhooo took to a 5th/6th place finish at the Philadelphia Regionals. I cut the Injects for the Street Peddler and swapped the Deja Vus for Same Old Things to make better use of Peddler, but I haven’t tested those changes. It’s very possible that you want to keep the Inject and make other cuts, but I didn’t want to make Career Fair worse by cutting Resources. It’s also true that Career Fair and Street Peddler play a little awkwardly together, but right now my instinct is that they’re both good enough that we should just give both of them the nod. Testing might disprove that notion. Street Peddler helps us to find Net Ready Eyes + Yog 0 as well, so having it in our list might make us want to swap the ZU.13s for that combo.

Geist is the criminal that almost certainly wants to be splashing Street Peddler. The little picture of a bin on Street Peddler’s rule text makes the efficiency it offers Geist completely insane, and I’d be surprised if there isn’t a Geist deck that wants at least two. The fact that Peddler dumps the non installed cards in the bin helps Geist even more, since he’ll happily Same Old Thing an Account Siphon and draw a card, after already having drawn a card with Peddler. Card flow is typically a little awkward in Criminal, and Geist with Peddler is a legitimate solution. I’m unsold on the disposable breakers as a concept, which is why I haven’t included a list that plays them. Honestly I feel that most Geist decks want Street Peddler, and I’m not attached to this particular list. Credit to Andrew ‘Xenasis’ Hynes for this list.

Stimshop has fallen out of favour recently with the steady rise of classic Prepaid Kate. However, Street Peddler may well be the new shot of life that the deck needs. Street Peddler both helps us to find our Personal Workshop, whilst also doing a mini Workshop impression when Stimhack is involved. Making Stimshop even faster while mitigating the set up time is an appealing concept, and this list looks tournament viable to me. Again, credit to Andrew ‘Xenasis’ Hynes for this list.

Would You Like a Bag? – Wrap Up

Street Peddler isn’t lighting the world on fire and turning the metagame on its head. But this is because it’s an economy card, not some kind of ridiculous high impact card that changes how we play the game. Sure Gamble doesn’t break the metagame but it’s still a 3 of in most Runner decks. I think you could defend the claim that Street Peddler is better than any of the Runner cards in Order and Chaos. Hopefully I’ve adequately demonstrated the ins and outs of why this card is as good as it is and made a believer out of you.

If you have any comments or criticisms don’t hesitate to post them in the Stimhack thread accompanying this article, and hopefully I’ll do my best to answer them.

Now hit the streets.

I’d like to thank Andrew ‘Xenasis’ Hynes for providing two of the featured decklists and for his help with proof reading and editing. Credit to Daniel Baxendale and the patrons of Waylands Forge, Birmingham for the picture of a bunch of Street Peddlers.